Presented by co-chairperson, Michael Westerfield and discussed by attendees: Concencus:

to allow full membership without sanctions.

C. Reports:

1. CTGP petitioning drive so far by Ken Krayeske: 4500 signatures have been acquired; 1000 have been turned in with more than 240 validated i.e. about a 24% rejection rate. Goal is to acquire 15,000 signatures by 8-9-06 deadline without paid help, SCC will need to decide at next 7-25-06 SCC meeting if paid help will be needed to get/achieve our goal.

Strategies to achieve our goal: petitioners the weekend of 7-7-06 and 7-8-06 at New London Sail Festival,

Suggest going to July 4th fireworks displays in our towns for more petitioning.

We discussed running CTGP candidates in the 2nd and 4th Congressional districts. Concerns were discussed about whether these candidates would improve or hinder our efforts to get our state-wide candidates on the ballot by petitioning and if we would have enough remaining effort to give due diligence to all candidates. Prevailing sentiment was given by Richard Duffee, petitioning candidate for the 4th Congressional District: it is up to the CTGP local chapter and CTGP to decide if candidates should run for office or not. Paul Bassler, in my years of working in campaigs, congressional candidates energize all CTGP campaigns. Barbara Barry: these types of campaigns are often an educational tool for anyone involved in municipal, state or federal campaigns. Additional, some people are only involved with political parties during campaigns. Mike DeRosa: tactically, CTGP can carry the petitions for the state-wide candidates and also for the 4th Congressional District candidate. However, the Fairfield

Chapter has to decide at their convention, it they want to run a Congressional candidate or not..

2. CTGP candidate events: Steve Fournier has committed to doing 2 fundraisers at his Hartford home e.g. cookout in his backyard which can hold up to 100 people. Do we want to do paid radio ads and a possible TV commercial in addition to having our candidates on local community TV programs.

Ken Krayeske: we need a database of contributors, Chris Nelson of New London Chapter is willing to do this but needs $400 to buy the software as he only works off of a MAC. However, they may be people who will be able to do this for free

Mike DeRosa: Dave in Glastonbury has provided this banner for Cliff and is willing to so any Banner or sign for any CTGP candidate. You can call Dave at: 860-633-9310.

New London Chapter wants any CTGP candidate to be interviewed for potential CTGP approval.

4. Our ACLU lawsuit against the 2005 CT "campaign finance reform" law: Mike DeRosa: got the ACLU to agree in writing that ACLU will pay all fees/costs incurred by this lawsuit, including any after costs e.g. court approval that the defendants are allowed to require the plaintiffs to pay defendants lawyers fees. S. Michael DeRosa is one of the plaintiffs, as one name is required per group, The Libertarian Party is also a plaintiff. All publicity is being handled by the ACLU and will be announced in early July 2006.

Charlie Pillsbury: the CTGP agrees with 2 of the 4 ACLU concerns: 1) we agree that the petitioning requirement to get full campaign funding is unconstitutional and 2) the 2 state major parties are allowed to pay more monies to their candidates than the other parties. The ACLU is also concerned about the 3) zero tolerance for contributions from lobbyists i.e. no lobbyist or family member can contribute to any campaign and 4) public campaign finance caps: allows self-funded wealthy candidates to be exempt from the caps but any candidate who chooses to utility the state campaign funding, must abide by the caps.

This violates the Helsinki accords i.e. international laws and discourages the development and activities of multiple political parties and allowing democratic chooses to the voters.

Mike DeRosa: unintended benefits of other campaign finance reforms laws have been seen. In Maine, more candidates were women, and independent candidates. These candidates reflected a broader demographic of the population i.e. less candidates were lawyers.